The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) recently announced the recovery of Bitcoin mining equipment valued at approximately $2.7 million.
The machines were stolen during a high-profile heist at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and were about to be shipped to Hong Kong when law enforcement intervened.
Detectives from the LAPD’s Cargo Theft Unit, along with various police departments, arrested two suspects, Oscar David Borrero-Manchola and Yonaiker Rafael Martinez-Ramos, who are believed to be key members of a South American crime ring operating in Los Angeles. In a series of searches in the San Fernando Valley, authorities discovered around $4 million worth of stolen goods, including Bitcoin mining rigs and over $1.2 million in tequila, clothing, shoes, speakers, coffee, body wash, and pet food.
Borrero-Manchola was booked for receiving stolen property and later released, while Martinez-Ramos remains in custody on a no-bail warrant. The LAPD emphasized that the investigation is ongoing, with the possibility of further arrests.
Although the LAPD did not disclose the exact number or models of the recovered mining rigs, current Bitcoin mining machines typically range in price from $3,000 to over $5,000 each.
This incident is not isolated. In July 2024, the LAPD recovered stolen Bitcoin mining rigs worth $579,000 from a cargo van and storage unit. Globally, one of the largest thefts occurred in Iceland between late 2017 and early 2018, when over 600 mining machines were stolen from data centres. Later, many of those rigs were found in China, highlighting an ongoing international issue with crypto mining equipment theft.
Meanwhile, Bybit’s CEO disclosed a substantial theft of 500,000 ETH, highlighting the hackers’ increasing use of crypto mixers like Wasabi and TornadoCash to obfuscate the movement of the approximately £1.1 billion stolen. Despite these anonymization techniques, a significant portion of the funds remains traceable, although decoding mixer transactions presents a major challenge for investigators seeking to recover the assets.
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